Sega's 4X Strategy Game Humankind Gets An Xbox Game Pass Surprise

Later this month, Amplitude Studios and Sega will launch a new 4X strategy game called Humankind. Humankind will have stiff competition when it launches, as the 4X genre is filled with some very established franchises. As a result, Humankind will need every advantage it can get if Sega wants to go toe-to-toe with the more established competitors like Civilization, and today, we learned that it's getting a big one on launch day.

Sega and Microsoft have confirmed that Humankind will be a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass for PC. This is a pretty big pickup for Xbox Game Pass because there's been a fair amount of anticipation riding behind Humankind. At the same time, this could be a huge deal for the game itself, as a day-one release on Xbox Game Pass has the potential to expand the game's audience dramatically.

Today's announcement was joined by a new trailer that gives us a look at Humankind by the numbers. The trailer, for instance, notes that there are 60 historical cultures in the game to start, while there are 10 different biomes to explore and 45 different animal species to interact with on the map.

Sega and Microsoft definitely hammered out this deal at the 11th hour, as Humankind is launching on PC next week. Specifically, Humankind has a release date of August 17th, though unfortunately, the planned Mac version of the game will lag behind the Windows version by about a month.

Amplitude definitely knows what it's doing in the realm of turn-based 4X games, as before Humankind, it made the Endless Space and Endless Legend games. We'll see if Humankind has the chops to compete with other 4X games like Civilization, Stellaris, and Galactic Civilizations soon enough, so stay tuned.